A rather average week for Proleague overall, at least in terms of game quality. There was quite a lot of mediocre play, but all of the mediocre play was counter-balanced by one game. One shining game that reminded everyone, yet again, of why Brood War is such an awesome game to watch. Of course, what else can I be talking about but:



You know what happens when Jaedong and Baby meet? They decide which one of them will play at a subpar level the next time they meet. I get the feeling that this meeting didn’t happen this time around, and I really have no complaints. This should happen more often.

So both of these guys go for a normal build. JD with his 12 Hatch and mass Zergling before Mutas, and Baby with a normal 1 Rax expand into 3 Rax. But Baby decides to go Overlord hunting with some of his Marines, and considering how far the ramp is from the mineral line…



This is a pretty big deal when trying to fight Mutas, and Jaedong continues to pressure Baby with additional Lings. Once his Mutas come out, he does a great job of harassing Baby’s natural, taking down multiple SCVs and two turrets. Jaedong does his best to try to keep Baby pinned to his base, but soon Baby had enough MnM to confidently push out of his base.

Yet this was no ordinary push by Baby. This build was specifically designed to punish the fast Hive play that Jaedong had been favoring lately. Instead of getting a Starport, and waiting for the first Vessel to come out before pushing, he skipped the Starport, and pushed out with 2 Tanks, right when Jaedong only had 2 Lurkers. In his zeal to get to Hive as fast as possible, Jaedong had skimped on getting Lurkers, meaning that he would have essentially no units to deal with Baby’s push.



But Jaedong being Jaedong, he abused every mistake that Baby made. He managed to snipe two of Baby’s Tanks, thus making it extremely difficult for Baby to push into Jaedong’s natural. However, Jaedong had a slight problem…



Fortunately for Jaedong, his 3rd Hatchery didn’t get killed, but he had lost a lot of Drones. Yet while Baby was busy looking elsewhere, Jaedong managed to advance with his Lurkers and snipe Baby’s last tank that was shelling Jaedong’s front. By consistently sniping the Tanks, Jaedong was able to save his natural and begin clawing his way back into the game from these early setbacks.

Baby isn’t done yet though. He begins to attempt Dropship play, but his first attempt gets spotted, and Jaedong, being the bonjwa that he is, caught the Dropship in the middle of the map with his Mutalisks, and destroyed it.



Meanwhile, Consume had finished for Jaedong, and so he could finally push Baby out of his natural and gain some breathing room. Jaedong was thus able to take his fourth expansion.

And so with a comfortable four bases, Jaedong started attacking Baby’s expansions. First he tried assaulting Baby’s mineral only expansion, but with some great MnM control, Baby managed to snipe Jaedong’s Defiler before it could throw up a Swarm even though it had just consumed a full HP Lurker.

As Jaedong continued the attack on the mineral only, he looked away for a split second, which cost his Zerglings their lives.



Since Jaedong lost at least two control groups of Zerglings and several Lurkers in that attack, Baby saw that Jaedong essentially had no army, and so attacked Jaedong’s natural. Even though Jaedong had Swarm and Zerglings there to defend, Baby easily took care of that problem with D-Matrixed Firebats.



Jaedong was in trouble. The Nydus got sniped, and so Jaedong was hanging on by a thread. He needed a miracle.



Baby couldn’t advance past the Swarm, and so Jaedong successfully pushed back Baby’s attack, although it was really close. At this point, Jaedong had Ultralisks out, but Baby’s Vessel count was rising rapidly and dangerously. So how do you counter this problem?



With Jaedong slowly ealing with Baby’s Vessel count, he began to take other bases. He sets up bases at both 6 and 9, while Baby takes 3. However, Baby forgets to take the gas at 3, and so remains stuck on 2 gas, which isn’t really ideal. Jaedong also snipes two of Baby’s full Dropships. Soon enough, Jaedong demonstrates the power of a 4 gas Zerg whose econ has remained essentially unmolested for the entire game.



Baby attempts to send out three other Dropships, but Jaedong snipes them all with Scourge. With Jaedong’s economy just absolutely overpowering at this point, Baby can do nothing to stop the unending tide of Zerg units. He soon taps out.

Baby’s early game push was a fantastic strategy, but even though he killed most of Jaedong’s Drones down at his expansion, Jaedong was able to halt Baby’s advance by sniping all of Baby’s tanks. This made Baby’s push essentially worthless, and took away most of its power. In the end, the delayed Vessels ended up hurting Baby since he didn’t do any damage with his push. Finally, I think it’s fitting to note that over the course of the game, Baby sent out 8 Dropships total. Only 1 of them landed, and the one that landed killed 1 Drone. Jaedong was able to snipe every single one of Baby’s Dropships, which was an absolutely masterful feat. The building time used for those 8 Dropships could have gone into 8 Vessels instead, but Jaedong was able to deny all of Baby’s attempts at harassment. Truly masterful play from the Tyrant.







I love watching firebathero play. And no, not just because he does awesome ceremonies when he wins (or he did, before going to Ace), but because he generally has a very exciting play style. I wouldn’t go as far to say that he’s the polar opposite of Canata, but he certainly comes close.

Often times though, firebathero has one glaring weakness: He doesn’t know how to capitalize on an advantage. He has lost multiple matches because of this flaw, and it’s a shame really, considering just how great his play is otherwise. But it’s something that he has to live with, and something that will always hold him back from greatness.

But I’m glad to see that firebathero has kind of cured this problem of his, though he came dangerously close to falling into the same trap all over again in his match against Mind. But thankfully, he didn’t. I’m not saying that he played a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but he didn’t fall back into his old habits. Instead, once he grabbed an advantage in the early game, he never really let go of it.

He secured this advantage because of: 1) Getting an early contain on Mind, and 2) Mind deciding to take top middle. Mind was never able to truly break out of firebathero’s contain until late in the midgame, and by then firebathero had already secured another starting point, giving his economy a major boost.

Yet Mind’s inability to fully break out of firebathero’s contain was due to his poor decision to try to take the 12 o’clock base. Why is taking that base a mistake? Because on Circuit Breaker, the 12 expansion is on low ground relative to the rest of the map. Thus firebathero was able to constantly harass Mind’s 12 with a few tanks on the high ground, and Mind was essentially floundering about, devoting a large chunk of his forces to defending that position. Then after firebathero had taken the bottom left starting position, he unveiled his coup de grace – the real reason why taking 12 was such a bad decision.



As if Mind wasn’t already far behind, this nuke really hit him hard. Yet Mind continued to mine from that base. Even though he finally broke the contain and began to pressure firebathero, he could never really recover from the blow that firebathero had dealt to him with that one nuke. And so a few minutes later…



Ouch. Soon after, Mind tapped out. Great use of nukes from firebathero, and it’s nice to see that he continued to keep the pressure on Mind instead of just sitting back after securing the early contain. If he keeps this kind of play up, he has the potential to become a truly solid player for Ace (and he can boost his win-loss rate over 50%! 4 more games firebathero! I believe in you!).



This game is here for only one reason. Guardians are awesome.



Bogus has sucky MnM micro, and doesn’t know how to properly play against 2 Hatch Mutas. What else is new? Oh that’s right. Hyun went GUARDIANS and WON.



This game… Was really strange. But first I should probably give credit where it’s due. Zero played really well. He used his Mutas and Scourge efficiently, and successfully used the Scourge to threaten rather than kill Bisu’s Corsairs. Zero always led with his Mutas, and kept his Scourge spaced out nicely, thus forcing Bisu to run his Corsairs away rather than engage. This was crucial for Zero, as he was able to retain air control, thus allowing him to stop any and all harassment attempts that Bisu tried in the early game.

However despite Zero’s great play, Bisu made some rather strange decisions during this game. In particular, he mostly refused to get any Dragoons or Templar during the midgame, favoring Archons instead. This allowed Zero to gain a foothold with his Lurkers. Bisu favored a Zealot-heavy composition during the game, which is not the combination you want when dealing with a defensive, Lurker heavy Zerg.

This was rather questionable decision making by Bisu, as he allowed Zero to solidify his position with Swarm and Nydus Canals, more or less completely locking down his position. Bisu needed Reavers to break Zero’s position, but he got them far too late (and lost a Shuttle with two of them), and didn’t expand to take a 5th gas despite Zero being unable to pressure it if Bisu did take one. It was overall a very disappointing game from Bisu, especially after demolishing HyuN last week with much better play on the same map.

Overall it wasn’t the best showing from Bisu, and Zero played a solid game. That can only really end in one way.





There are many, many fails that happen every week Proleague. These range from your average micro fail to your more general “why does this player suck so bad?” fail. This section is reserved for the single fail that happened this past week where a player essentially won the game, then flubbed it.



So here was free. Playing against Bisu in the first match he’s had against a non-scrub in a while. He went 3 Gate, Bisu went 1 Gate Reaver. Because Bisu mismicro’d, he lost a lot more Dragoons that he needed.

So this was the situation:



A clear advantage. So the logical choice for free?

Run away.

No I’m serious. Apparently free lives in a world where you run away when you have an advantage, and could easily, at the very least, snipe the Reaver. Even the commentators were confused. And then Bisu scouts free trying to harass with his Reaver, and so attacks and destroys most of free’s army.

Then after free tries to continue playing for another 10 minutes or so, he ggs. Talk about a facepalm moment…





Last week, fantasy broke everyone’s hearts when he lost because he looked at the “long term” game instead of the short term game. But this week he’s learned his lesson. Now he’s going to focus on the short term, and get revenge on the same map that he previously lost on. He’s angry. Light will fall.

And so fantasy goes for pretty much the exact same strategy as his last game on this map. Split the map and win by just having better positioning. Kind of like Flash. And so the map gets split, and fantasy begins his suave outmaneuvering of Light.

It begins with fantasy pressuring both Light’s 6 position and then assaulting Light’s position up at top left. Fantasy attacked Light at precisely the right time, when Light was just about to set up turrets there, and so he prevented Light from cementing his hold on that position. As the game slowly progressed, both players massed up a ton of Wraiths, and worked their way up to Battlecruisers. And this happened for… essentially 15 minutes.

Then finally Light broke the stalemate, and attacked fantasy’s bottom right mineral only expansion. Fantasy, knowing that Light had no air force to stop his Battlecruisers, advanced into the top left position to take down the turrets there, and began his assault. Then Light made a stupid move. He attacked fantasy’s force of Wraiths, BCs, and Goliaths with only Wraiths. I really don’t know how he hoped to win that battle, but whatever. This was fantasy’s game.



Once Light lost his Wraiths, fantasy destroyed Light’s top left. Fantasy had a clear economic advantage. Then, fantasy being fantasy, he decided to return the favor and attacked Light’s position with his Wraiths, Goliaths, and BCs. Of course fantasy knew that he would lose the battle. I mean if you walk your Goliaths straight into Tanks, then they’re obviously going to die. And so fantasy lost his air force, but whatever. Big deal. Better economy, remember? Fantasy has this easy.



And so Light then proceeds to attack fantasy’s bottom left, but that’s no problem. Fantasy will crush this attack force and the-



Oh. I see. Fantasy just gave this game to Light as a present! You see, fantasy could read into the future and see that Light would lose against Mind in the MSL, and felt so sorry for him that he tried to make Light feel better in advance. By focusing on the short term and focusing on making Light feel better, he forewent looking at his official record in the long term. Yes. Fantasy’s so generous.

If you are still following Brood War in your room in midst of all the exams, other games and all of the summer fun you could be having instead, the last few weeks should have been more than worth your continued interest by entertainment value alone. Although it is all but certain that Air Force ACE won't be playing in the playoffs and SKT will, every team can beat any other team at the moment, and the next week will have very exciting matches that you can look forward to.

◇ 5/7
Air Force ACE vs. KT Rolster on OGN
Don't let these veterans battlescars fool you – they are very capable of taking a game off everyone. ACE took SKT to Ace match, and defeated both Samsung KHAN and WeMade FOX, who were on fire. This matchup is also a battle of generations, as KT has been using a lot of rookies that performed surprisingly well, so I fully expect this to be the more interesting match of the two. I honestly don't know who will win this, but I hope to see good matches as a birthdaygift. Meanwhile on MBC, MBCGame HERO and Woongjin Stars duke it out.

◇ 5/8
WeMade FOX vs. Hite CJ Entus on OGN
If you only followed Winners League, you might think WeMade would be helpless before a monster team such as CJ, but WeMade has finally rebounded from their long slump, and will likely bring CJ all the way to Ace match. With BaBy as strong as he's now, this might easily be the match of the week. On MBC, SK Telecom T1 vs. Samsung KHAN should give you more than your weekly dose of PvP.

◇ 5/9
Woongjin Stars vs. Hwaseung OZ on OGN
Stars vs. OZ could easily end up being a huge ZvZfest, and seeing the absence of Hive Tech ZvZ lately, I'm afraid this exact thing will happen. But I'd still watch it for the possibility of Light vs. Jaedong, HiyA vs. ZerO/Neo.G_Soulkey or Killer vs. Really. That would even be true if I weren't such a STX fanboy and didn't watch STX SouL vs. Air Force ACE at the same time on MBCGame.

◇ 5/10
WeMade FOX vs. KT Rolster on MBC Game
Can WeMade snipe Flash again? Will Action roll out his lategame hive tech ZvT again? Will Shine come up with another earlygame attack that will result in several bans or the utterance of his nickname "Toilet Zerg"? How many chin-puns will be made in the Live Report thread? I can only look forward to answers. While I give WeMade the advantage, KT's recent performances make me think they could take it to Ace Match and win. The other match is Samsung KHAN vs. MBCGame HERO on OGN.

◇ 5/11
STX SouL vs. SK Telecom T1 on MBC Game
While STX has not been looking good recently and SKT has been slightly underperforming, the potential for this game is pretty high. When Calm, Kal, Bogus, Fantasy, Bisu and BeSt are all on their game, it could mean a lot of exciting games. Calm vs. Fantasy, Bogus vs. BeSt and Kal vs. Bisu are all exciting in their own right, although SKT is likely to win. I hope it won't disappoint.
On OGN, CJ Entus and Hwaseung OZ fight the Winners League Semifinal that could have been.